If you want to know how someone is feeling, look at their eyebrows. Look at the examples in the three rows below. Before scrolling down, what do you think each face is feeling?

Look at each column to see how the same eyes and mouths with different eyebrows to see how much of a difference they can make:

Try it for yourself! Experiment with 

In literature, the expression “they live on the other side of town” (or “the wrong side of town”) is an example of figurative language, not just a description of location.

Authors use this phrase to:

• Show class differences (rich vs. poor)
• Show racial differeneces
• Explain why characters may be treated differently
• Create conflict between characters or groups
• Help readers understand the society in the story

The expression teaches readers that judging people by where they live is unfair. Good authors often use this phrase to encourage readers to think critically and to show that a person’s value does not depend on their neighborhood.

Robert Fulton's steamboat began traveling the Mississippi River in 1811 which made travel up and down the river easier for passengers and freight. Further improvements on the design of the steamboat increased the number of boats and, therefore, the number of passengers. In 1814, there were only 20 trips to New Orleans by steamboat. By 1834, there were 1,200!

The truly big advance in travel came with trains, however. In 1827, the first stone was laid for a railroad from Baltimore, Maryland to Ohio. Train travel was much faster than other forms of travel and spurs, or rails off of the main branch of the railroad, to smaller or out of the way towns became possible. Railroads were being built all over the country with the first coast-to-coast railroad being completed in 1869.

The tables below show how much improvement there was in the time it took to travel from New York City. The dark lines show travel time in weeks, the lighter color lines show travel time in days. If you look at the very southern (or bottom) tip of Florida, for example, you can see that it took about 3 weeks to travel there in 1830 since it is past the "2 wks." line. By 1830, it had improved to 2 weeks because it is past the "1 week" line. By 1857, it took only 4 days to travel to the southernmost tip of Florida as it is past the 3 day line.

The following information is taken from the USDA, the Alabama Agricultural Museum, and Cornell University's data sets on crops. 

The following table is the price per pound for cotton. It is not adjusted for inflation, so these are the actual prices paid at the time.

Many places in Connecticut share a similar name: Charter Oak Bridge, Charter Oak State College, Charter Oak Park. Why are so many places and things in Connecticut named “Charter Oak”? The name comes from one of Connecticut’s most famous legends.

Despite Connecticut’s efforts to resist, it became part of the Dominion of New England for the next two years. In 1689, James II was overthrown and Andros lost power in the colonies. The Connecticut Charter emerged from hiding and was used to govern Connecticut until 1818.

On August 21, 1856, the Charter Oak, estimated at nearly 1,000 years old, fell down during a violent storm. Because it was such an important part of Connecticut history, people used the wood to carve chess pieces, chairs, and many other items. Original artifacts made from its wood, along with numerous images, are on display at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Though this solved the problems in older calendars that were used, it wasn't quite accurate enough because the actual time between the beginning of one spring to the beginning of the next spring is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. This means the Julian calendar was 11 minutes and 14 seconds too slow. This added up to a full day off every 128 years.

By the time Pope Gregory XIII came around in 1572, the calendar was off by ten days, so the first day of spring was happening earlier and earlier on the calendar but really should have been happening on the vernal equinox (Latin for "equal night"), which is the date in the spring when there is the same amount of daylight and darkness.

Pope Gregory did two things to fix the problem. First, though he kept the 365 day calendar with a leap day every four years, he added a new rule: there would be no leap year in years ending in "00" unless those years were divisible by 400. Therefore, the years 1700, 1800, 1900, and 2100 would not be a leap year but the years 1600 and 2000 would. This change was so accurate that today, scientists need only add leap seconds every few years to the clock in order to keep the calendar correct. Secondly, since the Julian calendar had fallen ten days behind over the centuries, Pope Gregory XIII said that October 4, 1582 would be officially followed by October 15, 1582. Not only would the new calendar be used, but ten days would be "lost" forever, and the new year would now begin on January 1 instead of March 25.

Though Pope Gregory's new "Gregorian calendar" was developed in 1572, it took centuries for it to be adopted worldwide. Great Britain finally decided to adopt the calendar in 1751 and their government said September 2, 1752 would be followed by September 14, 1752. Because they took so long to change to the new calendar, they had to add eleven days instead of ten. At that time, America was under British rule, so the American colonies changed their calendar then, too.

Because people were so aware of the changes, for many years after, dates were written using both the old and the new calendars. Before 1752, the new year began March 25, and after, it changed to January 1st. Therefore, Washington's birthday was in 1731 on the old calendar and 1732 on the new calendar since it was in February. And, since his birthday on the old calendar was February 11 and they added eleven days to the calendar, his birthday became February 22nd. 

Jefferson came back to the United States in November 1789 to work as Secretary of State for President Washington. Right away, he started having problems with Alexander Hamilton, who was Secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson did not agree with Hamilton’s plan to create the Bank of the United States. He thought it was against the rules of the Constitution.

At the same time, the French Revolution was getting more violent. Jefferson still wanted America to be allied, or have friendly reltions with France, but Hamilton wanted the country to be closer to Great Britain. Jefferson even started to think that Hamilton and his group, called the Federalists, wanted to bring back kings and queens in America. He also worried that President Washington was listening to Hamilton too much. In 1793, Jefferson resigned from Washington's cabinet.

 In 1796, as the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, he became Vice President under John Adams and then was elected President in 1801. In his inaugural address, he called Washington “our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country’s love.” Back at Mount Vernon, Martha Washington dismissed Jefferson's "sarcastic" remarks, claiming his election was the "greatest misfortune our nation has ever experienced." Jefferson served for two terms, with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase being his greatest accomplishment, before retiring to Virginia where he died in 1826.

Historical fiction is a great way to learn about the past, and better yet, to get a feel for the past. Going through a novel and pointing out things that could not have happened somewhat misses the point of historical fiction. In the midst of the epidemic surely many people had a view of what was happening that was wrong. Isolated and fearful, how could anyone know what was really going on?

However, Philadelphians in the 1790s were careful to keep records of their city. Before the epidemic a directory was published that gave the name and occupation of every head of household, listing each house in each street. After the epidemic, a list of all the dead was compiled, and a street by street, alley by alley, tally of the fever deaths was made. During the epidemic, records were kept of admissions to Bush Hill hospital. Of course, we can't expect to find the fictional characters of Fever 1793 in these records. But we can get a better sense of the city at that time, even in regards to the most mundane things like the weather.

On August 16, 1793, Matilda Cook woke up moaning about another hot August day. Not far away Benjamin Rittenhouse kept a daily record of the temperature, wind direction and sky conditions at 6 am and 3 pm. Benjamin Rush thought weather was so important in trying to solve the mystery of the spread of yellow fever that he included the weather records for all of 1793 in his memoir of the epidemic.

The controversy over the best way to treat yellow fever has become one of the most remembered aspects of the epidemic. From the first instant histories to those written in the past few years, the battle between the doctors has been recounted. Modern historians usually can't resist taking sides, always at the expense of Dr. Benjamin Rush's therapies of purging and bleeding. Rush was very much responsible for this because he did not suffer to apply his remedies in silence. He so trumpeted the virtues of purging and bleeding that doctors ever since have been accusing him of killing his patients. Fever 1793 comes down on the side of Rush's opponents.

Unfortunately the critique of Rush is not strictly accurate. While Dr. Deveze did oppose Rush's approach, it was not bleeding per se that he objected to. In his memoir of the epidemic, Deveze describes how he frequently bled patients when their symptoms required it. How Deveze differed from Rush is that he did not take as much blood out at each bleeding, and he avoided violent purgatives. When patients' symptoms became grave, Deveze's extreme measure was to apply hot bricks to the extremities as well as greater uses of poultices to raise the skin in blisters. Applying those to the head required that the patient's hair by shaved off.

In Fever 1793, Matilda has her illness between September 12 and 20. The courageous exploits of Stephen Girard in making the hospital a place where people wanted to come, actually began on September 12. It took him several days to arrange it so Dr. Deveze would be in charge. He came to the hospital on the 16th and had complete control of medical operations on the 21st when the young American doctors were relieved of their duties. By the way, running such a hospital was not a desirable job for doctors. Deveze replaced four young Americans who visited the hospital periodically. Hospitals in those days were only for the poor; the poor were the principal victims in any epidemic; hence, a doctor worried about his reputation, stayed away from fever hospitals! Dr. Deveze had been in the city a little over a month and it would have been difficult for him to attract patients. He was ideal for the hospital. He did soon get an American associate, Dr. Duffield.

Matilda awoke as the nurse Mrs. Field tried to feed her. Going over my notes just now, I found an interesting note in the Minutes of the Committee in charge of the hospital. They passed a rule that a doctor would give food to each patient each day. This highlights the importance of food and drink in the treatment of disease at that time. (It also may have been a ploy to force the American doctors to resign. They insisted that after daily visits the nurses could be trusted to administer medicines!) Even Dr. Rush, who tried to simplify treatment, has particular ideas about which broths and drinks were best given to patients.

Matilda leaves the hospital on September 24, twelve days after the on-set of her disease. Judging from the hospital records, other patients had similar experiences. However, others stayed in much longer. In 1793 there seemed to be three types of yellow fever cases: those who took it lightly and suffered some ill effects for a day or so; those who died within the first three days; and those who took a decided turn for the worse after the third day or so. Of course, many of the latter eventually died. Now, as I go through the collection of letters and memoirs I have about the epidemic, I'm curious if anyone who suffered the disease as severely as Matilda evidently did was able to be as active as she was in the rest of the book.

The famous Orion, the hunter, constellation is easy to find in the night sky because of the three stars in his belt, and the bright stars Betelgeuse and Rigel near his shoulder and foot. Orion is shown facing the constellation Taurus, the Bull, which hints that Orion might be based on the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh or the Greek hero Heracles, who both fought bulls. Orion’s many stories tell of his skill as a brave hunter, but he died because he was too proud. In one story, Orion bragged that he could kill any animal on Earth, which either made the Earth angry, or Artemis, the goddess of hunting, was upset. To punish Orion, the Earth sent a scorpion to sting him, and he died from the sting. Because of this, Orion and the scorpion constellations are on opposite sides of the sky, making it look like Orion is running away as the scorpion rises in the east.

According to the Greek myth, after Perseus defeated Medusa by cutting off her head, Pegasus came out of her neck and flew away. Some stories say that Perseus was actually riding Pegasus when he saved Andromeda, but usually, Pegasus is linked to the hero Bellerophon. Zeus also used Pegasus to carry his thunderbolts. Even though we only see the front half of Pegasus in the night sky, it is the seventh-largest constellation in the northern sky. Long ago, the constellation was made up of a “square of Pegasus,” which was a group of four bright stars. However, now one of those stars, near Pegasus' belly, has been given to the nearby constellation Andromeda and is called Alpha Andromedae, so only three stars remain in the well-known square.

When Heracles went temporarily mad because of the goddess Hera, he accidentally killed his wife and children. To make up for these terrible actions, he was given 12 very hard tasks to complete. The first task was to kill the Nemean lion, a scary creature with a tough hide that liked to attack the people living nearby. Heracles managed to defeat the lion by hugging it tightly and squeezing it to death. The constellation Leo represents this fierce lion. It has six stars in an arc shape that shows the lion's front body and head, ready to pounce. The brightest star in this arc is called Regulus, which means “little king.”

The Phoenix, located near the constellation Eridanus, refers to the mythical, multicolored bird that is able to rise from the ashes of its predecessor.  Ankaa, the Arabic name of the constellation’s largest star, means phoenix.

Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear, has seven stars that form its back and tail. You might know it better as the Big Dipper because its stars look like a ladle or a drinking gourd. Four stars make the cup part, and three stars make the handle.
The story behind the name Ursa Major is more complicated. In a book called Metamorphosis, the writer Ovid tells a story about a huntress named Callisto. She promised to stay loyal to the goddess Artemis, but Zeus tricked her by pretending to be Artemis. Callisto ended up having a son named Arcas. When Zeus’ wife Hera found out, she turned Callisto into a bear. Later, Arcas, not knowing the bear was his mother, tried to hunt her. To stop this tragedy, Zeus turned Callisto into the constellation Ursa Major and Arcas into another constellation called Boötes, the Herdsman.

Andromeda was the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus. Her parents chained her to a rock in the sea as a sacrifice to the sea monster Cetus. Things seemed dire for Andromeda until Perseus, a hero who had just defeated the gorgon Medusa, flew down from the sky and saved her.

The constellation Andromeda used to share its main star, Alpha Andromedae (also called Alpheratz), with the nearby constellation Pegasus. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is part of the Andromeda constellation, is 2.5 million light-years away from Earth and is the farthest object in space that we can see without a telescope.